etymologyidioms
I have trouble with the idiom "no love lost". I understand that it is used when people are at odds or don't get along, but I don't understand why. Interpreted literally it sounds like there should be plenty of love, but it seems to mean the opposite.
Where does this expression come from? And is there a different interpretation that better explains its meaning?
"Kick back" can literally be used to describe the action of putting your legs up when you are sitting in a chair. So, if I "kick back" at my desk at work, I put my feet onto my desk, like this:
This literal idea has been extended to talk about relaxing, sometimes even when no actual "kicking back" takes place.
It's a sarcastic response.
Taken literally the sentence would mean the speaker isn't already familiar with the situation and wants more information. However it is rarely (these days never) meant literally, and is used sarcastically to mean the opposite. I.e. That the speaker is already familiar with the situation. Its meaning is similar to the expression, "You don't say?", where the speaker is acting like they don't already know, when in fact they do.
The difference between these two expressions however is that, "Tell me about it", has taken on a sympathetic tone over the years, indicating shared misery, whereas, "You don't say?", is an insult where you don't actually care what the person has to say.
There's little in the words themselves to indicate that difference. That difference is simply the connotations those expressions have taken on over time. Tone of voice is pretty critical here, because the difference between a sympathetic statement and an insulting one is simply a different inflection while saying the exact same words.
Best Answer
Searching Google books, I find that what the phrase originally meant in the 17th and 18th centuries was that "A loves B just as much as B loves A"; the amount of love is balanced, so there is no love lost. In other words, unrequited love was considered to be "lost". This could be used to say they both love each other equally, or they both hate each other equally. The idiom has now come to mean only the second possibility.
From this 1754 English-Danish dictionary we have a translation:
(1712):
(1645):
John Dryden (1712):
There's also a translation of the expression in a 1732 Irish-English dictionary, but I don't know Gaelic.